We're "Free," But From What?

In this country we have a long, proud and loud history of "freedom." Freedom from tyranny, principally. The tyranny of monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, despotism totalitarianism and fascism. Freedom from government that oppresses the individual either politically or economically. Freedom for the individual to do whatever he/she wants to do. Along with that we have, over the last two hundred fifty years, developed the set of rights which we are willing to accord to the individual. And we protect these rights militantly and vociferously. We have also developed the symbols, the institutions, the infrastructure to reinforce that belief in the rights of the individual. So, in this respect we are "free."

But we still have further to go in the journey of our development as human creatures. For example, we must get ourselves to the point where we are free of the tyranny of employers and the work place; the work place must become more humane, and more in concert with our environment, so that productivity and sustainability don't fight each other at the cost of our planet, human lives or personal integrity.

We need also to get ourselves free from the effects of our ignorance, our fears and anxieties, our stereotypes -- the stuff that's in our (individual and free) heads. This is the stuff that keeps us from making the decisions that will help us most.

Right now, the thing we need most, the thing we need that will do us the most good, especially in Michigan but also generally across the nation, is education. Yet ignorance, fear, greed, anxiety, stereotypes all are forcing people in legislatures and in the hustings to relegate education not to the top of the priority list but somewhere down at the bottom of the list.

That's hurting us. That keeps us robbing the future and calling it "gross domestic product." (from Paul Hawken in his Commencement address at Portland U.) Lack of a state and national highest priority emphasis on education keeps us from advancing because it robs us of the creativity we need to come up with solutions to our problems that we desperately need; but, instead, we keep trying the tired old solutions over and over again. Just trim the budget, cut the budget, one more time.

So we argue in our Michigan legislature about a few hundred million dollars in a pie that is getting smaller and smaller the longer we refuse to deal with Michigan's corrections system and health care. And the longer we refuse to raise the taxes we need so desperately to upgrade the level of education for our people so we can make something of our society in the new "Age of the Unthinkable.". (See Joshua Ramos' new book by that title.)

In the words of Arthur Miller, the playwright, in his book "Chinese Encounters" which he co-authored with his wife Inge Morath, the photographer at the end of the 1970s, this is "the paradox of human need bound to the human resistance to change." That's quite a phrase, isn't it? Even though we need greatly increased education so desperately, yet we resist the changes necessary to make that happen. We argue about which dollars we're going to cut from the budget instead of building the budget we need and then selling it to the people of the state as their bounden duty and responsibility to do it.